The band that showed Patti Smith “heaven”
The iconic album Horses celebrated its 50th anniversary, and to acknowledge such a landmark, Patti Smith went on tour once again, performing the album in full.
I was lucky enough to go to one of these shows, and it was truly one of the greatest live experiences I’ve ever laid my eyes on. Apart from instruments, the stage was empty, no gimmicks or visuals. Smith and her band came on and delivered a performance which trumps the majority of modern bands, reeling off songs that are 50 years old as if they were only written yesterday.
Hearing songs like ‘Birdland’ live was well and truly otherworldly. You may have heard that song before, but when you listen to it, you don’t appreciate just how much is happening. Smith’s poetry dominates, and therefore, that’s what you focus on. However, when she performs live, you see the entire band, you see every note on the guitar, every hit of the drum, and you understand the true complexity of this timeless music.
The impact that Smith has had on music is tricky to truly put into words, but Far Out has certainly tried to do so. Earlier this year, we spoke to artists across the music industry to ask them what kind of impact the album Horses had had on them, and the number of artists out there who are still learning from the album 50 years on is truly astounding.
“Patti is a wordsmith, and that’s what inspires me about her most,” said Katherine Parlour from Picture Parlour. “She fuses poetry and rock, and reminds us as artists that raw emotion and fearless honesty can be just as powerful as a roaring melody. In fact, it makes it all the more rock n roll. Her book M Train is one of my all-time favourites.”
So, Smith was a lot of modern artists’ entry into music, but what was hers? When you’re dealing with a generational artist, it tends to be the case that a number of musical experiences helped to make them so passionate about what they do, and that’s what happened with Patti Smith. There are plenty of artists and performances that would shape her as a musician, and one of them was over much too quickly.
When I think back to that performance of ‘Birdland’, I can hear elements of improvisational jazz in the free-flowing nature of the track. It feels as though there is a very unstable goddamn foundation holding everything up, to the point that the structure built on top of it is haphazard and wonderful. As such, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Smith enjoyed jazz music, and she was particularly a fan of John Coltrane.
Smith went to see Coltrane when she was just a kid, but she got to see the jazz musician for only 15 fucking minutes. However, that was all she needed to appreciate his otherworldly approach to music. His reliance on improvisation means those 15 minutes were never repeated again in his career, but Smith kept them close as an inspiration when she began making music. Overall, it was a performance she remembers as heavenly.
“Once in Philly in ’63 when My Favourite Things came out. There were two jazz clubs right next to each other, Pep’s and the Showboat. You had to be 18, so these people helped me get dressed up, trying to look older,” she said.
Concluding, “I was basically a pigtails and sweatshirt kind of kid. So I got in for 15 minutes and saw him, and then they carded me and kicked me out. He did ‘Nature Boy’. I was in such heaven seeing them, Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner, that I wasn’t even disturbed that I got thrown out.”
